As promised a month ago, the Adam Smith reading starts Monday. I was late, myself, to buy the books, so I only discovered a few days ago that the editions I mentioned before — Modern Library for [book: Wealth of Nations], Great Minds for [book: Theory of Moral Sentiments] — are hard to come by. They don’t look hard to come by on Amazon, but my favorite bookseller — from which I buy all my books, if I can help it — tell me that it would be hard for you fine people to find them in your own favorite local retailers.

So. What I have here next to me is the University of Chicago Press edition, which is a reprint of the apparently canonical Cannan edition. This one is unabridged, five books long, and about 1200 pages.

I hope this new edition doesn’t screw people up. I was aiming for unabridged editions before, and this is an unabridged edition. So whatever edition you have won’t be too far from what I have.

I’ve got my best people at the Harvard Book Store working ’round the clock to find me the proper edition of [book: Theory of Moral Sentiments]. When I have that one in hand, I’ll mention it here as well. But we have our hands full with [book: Wealth of Nations] for a little while.